This book is in its tenth edition. I wondered how many books have a tenth edition, so, on June 22, 2009, I checked Amazon.com. Of the over 27 million books on Amazon.com, only about 7,000 have a tenth edition, and most are textbooks. This reflects two things: the book is popular, and its content is changing fast. To satisfy my curiosity, I searched again and found out that only a couple of calculus textbooks have a tenth edition. No wonder, since calculus has changed little--if at all--over the last 100 years. Data communications, on the other hand, changes overnight. Nevertheless, this tenth edition does a good job of trying to keep up to date.
The book has five parts. Part 1 is the introduction, and outlines the basics of data communications. The subsection “Future Trends” is interesting. Although the trends may have become realities, trying to incorporate them is a good idea. Part 2 explains the fundamental concepts, including the physical layer, the data link layer, the network and transport layers, and the application layer in the Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model’s seven-layer architecture. Strangely, the chapter sequence is neither top-down (from layers seven to one) nor bottom-up.
Part 3 details network technologies. Almost all current wired and wireless networking technologies are introduced. Part 4 concerns network management. Network security and network design issues are also included. Finally, Part 5 contains six appendices on connector cables, the spanning tree protocol, Internet protocol (IP) telephony, cellular technologies, transmission control protocol/IP (TCP/IP), and Windows Server. IP telephony and cellular technologies are very important; I felt they should have been included in the main text.
A nice thing about this book is that it includes many “management focus” stories from magazines and newspapers that highlight the actual use of data communications technologies. It makes readers feel that the technologies are useful and interesting.
In general, this is a good textbook, with many questions, exercises and mini-cases, case studies, and hands-on activities. The figures are good, except for some from screen shots (the figures are especially unclear in Appendix F). However, due to the pace of progress in data communications and networking, we should expect the eleventh edition soon.